


Tangled my tangled memories;

by anakinleias



Series: All I know of falling is finding the ground [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, One Shot, Partners to Lovers, Romance, Sexual Content, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:00:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7804558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anakinleias/pseuds/anakinleias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets of happier times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangled my tangled memories;

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting because ao3 gave me a lot of trouble with text disappearing, sorry if you already read this.
> 
> Karen and I had a talk after watching Civil War back in April about the BTS pics of Scarlett's short red hair and the story took a life of its own. We both decided to write a chunk of it since we both had ideas that could work in a way that our stories complemented each other. This has been in my drafts for a while now even though I kept adding to it and we finally got our shit together.
> 
> Disclaimer: Marvel owns everything.

They were three hours into a briefing when she felt it. A fluttering at her hairline making the hair at the back of her neck stand on edge, similar to the ever-familiar state of adrenaline she so constantly lived on, but not quite. She bit back the urge to shudder as she felt it grow in intensity, face finally betraying her focused exterior and turning minutely to search for the probable cause.

It was then that she noticed him, polar opposite to the way she held herself; reclined on his chair, doodling on the margins of the documents with his left hand while his right arm disappeared behind her chair. She could see the small ripples along his forearm signaling muscle flexing near her back and felt the faint tugging as his fingers intertwined in her curls, toying with the strands and rolling them in his hand in a manner between a caress and teasing. She stamped down a shudder as one of his fingers pulled on a particularly sensitive spot near her nape and bent her back in a discreet stretch to cover up her slip.

From the corner of her eye, she could see he had shifted his focus, finally done with his abstract art – which looked suspiciously like the one-eyed dog she had seen at his apartment last weekend, a shaggy creature quite fond of pizza and named Lucky. He’s surveying his work with apparent disinterest, glancing in her direction from the corner of his eye and gauging her reaction with the corners of his mouth pulled up into a small smile aimed at his pad.

 

-

Budapest is fire and blood. It’s lighthearted teasing and flirting over comms, it’s covers sharing a drink and faking a spat to draw the mark’s attention. It’s a hail of bullets as the mission gets blown to hell, being outgunned and outmanned and making it by the skin of their teeth.

It’s holing up in the basement of a hellhole restaurant, making bandages out of kitchen towels and pouring vodka over their many wounds. It’s Clint washing her blood matted hair over a sink using dish soap and cleaning up the gash in her head. It’s holding each other against the wall behind the stoves, huddling for warmth as he runs his fingers through the wet strands, trying to keep her conscious. It’s the snow falling outside while they’re trapped without extraction or a safe house. It’s lips touching in a whisper of a kiss, another thing they don’t talk about. It’s being compromised.

It’s the first time they almost don’t make it and the first time the notion scares them. It’s the first time they remember having something, someone, to live for.

 

-

Her thighs are shaking uncontrollably, body in complete sensory overload and incoherent sounds escaping her lips amidst small puffs of breath, hands clutching the sheets as her internal walls clutch his fingers, her hair splayed around the mussed sheets like a fiery halo.

A single curl rests atop her breast as she lays panting, still lost to the aftershocks as he gently lowers her legs to the mattress and lies beside her. He rests his head on his arm and gently nudges the strands with his nose, planting a kiss on her breast and making her shiver.

 

-

She’s sitting astride him, ankles loosely interlocked behind his back as he rocks his hips underneath her. She can feel him everywhere; his mouth pressed to hers, his chest pressed against her breasts, his hands splayed between her shoulder blades and at the back of her head, dexterous fingers buried in her hair, pulling her impossibly closer. She is a heady mixture of sensations, her entire body as if both on fire and submerged into icy water.

His palm travels the length of her spine, making her shudder as he tugs on the damp strands between his fingers and pulls her head back; studying her face as he suddenly changes the angle of his strokes. Her mind goes blank, eyes fogging over and head falling back.

She can feel the tips of her hair caressing the small of her back before he pulls her back to him, breathing her in and placing an open-mouthed kiss at the junction of her neck as she moans.

 

-

He wakes with a start, head jerking on the pillow as something scratchy encounters his face. He can’t breathe, and there is a horrible choking sensation as he tries to inhale through his mouth and the air won’t come in. His hand goes to his mouth and finds the source of his suffering: soft, long strands trapped between his lips and splayed across her pillow. His own sat untouched, a faint indentation of his former resting position relaying that he had once again done what she’d told him not to.

Natasha is not one for spooning, and the fact that he keeps choking on her hair whilst trying to hide his face in her neck just proves her point, so whenever he feels particularly clingy, she wraps herself around his body instead. She always ends up drifting away during the night, and he can’t contain himself. They’d had this conversation more than once with this exact same outcome and, barring putting a pillow between them – which neither are willing to do – there’s not much to be done. Every time he wakes up choking, only to discover her hair all around his face as result of him nuzzling her neck in his sleep as he wrapped his limbs around her small frame.

 

-

They were halfway into movie night, winding down after a mission not having gone quite according to plan. A simple extraction turned into a mess of epic proportions that left them both pissed as hell.

Her head rested on his lap as she stretched across the couch, his fingers combing through her hair ever since she had laid down, tresses still humid from her shower. His movements were gentle on her scalp, trying to soothe the headache he knew she was trying to will away.

He had a sappy remark on his tongue about forgetting the color of her eyes, ready for her response to be the aggravated but tender, with an eye roll she seemed to reserve for just him when he took notice of her fluttering lashes casting shadows against her cheekbones as she dozed. The screen cast a blue glow on her pale face as Ewan McGregor sang a melody about life being wonderful.

He couldn’t agree more.

 

-

Her hair was liquid fire on the sheets as she ran nails across his back; strands brushing against his thighs as her mouth made him see stars; falling across her face as she leaned over him, blanketing them both and trapping their gasps; over his shoulder as she stood on her knees in front of him, back pressed to his chest and holding onto his hip, needing him closer, _moremoremore_. The mess of waves spilling around his chest, smelling of sweat and sex as they lay panting.

 

-

He glances over at her still in bed after they had breakfast, laying on her stomach with her legs in the air as she reviews mission files. The morning sun filters through the curtains, cutting a slash across her shoulder and caressing the tips of her hair, turning her auburn locks into a deep crimson.

Putting his suitcase aside, he stares at her profile, the frown between her brows as she projects the words into the best way to proceed and plans for possible contingencies. He regrets leaving her side, but trusts Rogers to watch her back as well as he would. Moreover, Afghanistan is a touchy subject. He knows they wouldn’t send him if they didn’t want this done quietly. Should be easy enough, she probably won’t even have time to miss him.

Doesn’t mean he won’t miss her.

 

-

He had been packing when he found it, the little pouch hidden inside a stray green sock in his drawer. He lies back down beside her and leans on his elbow, opening the pouch and extracting its contents.

He’s been keeping this for a while and finally decides to just do it. The hand clutching her present opens slightly, two fingers caressing her spine and tracing the vertebrae upwards, bypassing the clasp of her bra – he’s tempted – and dipping towards her collarbones. Letting one side of the chain fall to lay it across her neck before his hands meet at her nape, he moves her hair aside to secure the clasp around her neck. Pulling the strands back to splay out across her shoulders, he kisses her temple as she lifts her eyes away from the pages to look at him from the corner of her eye.

She looks down, inspecting the pendant. The small silver arrow rests across her chest, warmed up from his hands and she can’t help but smile at the levels of symbolism. He’s such a sap. She loves this idiot, and she’s truly going to miss him. She throws the file inside her nightstand drawer and turns to face him, eyes saying everything he already knows as their mouths smother their smiles.

She reaches behind her to undo the clasp of her bra. He doesn’t finish packing until sundown.

 

-

Her message had been cryptic and with a careless undertone she seldom used that had made his blood turn cold as he recalled how her daredevil attitude could sometimes cross into suicidal territory. He had ditched the now pointless op without a second thought, fear driving his mind into conjuring scenarios he would rather not consider. He could’ve never predicted the truth, he realized, as he had stood in the middle of the airport, watching footage of the Triskelion falling to the bottom of the Potomac.

Later while in the plane, he had watched her hearing at Capitol Hill and through the fog of emotions running through him about the entire thing, he looked at her resolute face and could only feel the pride at the person she had become, and how much he loved her. As she determinedly walked out after posing that challenge, hair flying behind her and leaving everyone stunned, he glimpsed the necklace; she wore to _a Senate hearing on international television_ and his mouth curved into a smile. She just had to stick it to everyone in every way possible. _Atta girl._

 

-

He sends her back a signal once he reaches the meet point, the warehouse a former winery in a small town south of Poland; once used as a front for money laundering busted by the authorities years prior, now abandoned and currently one of their off-book safe houses. He secures the location and heads for the rooms to wash off the desert grime that feels embedded into his skin after 2 months of precarious living conditions, and as he steps off 20 minutes later toweling his hair, he knows she’s arrived. He can feel her presence, smell her perfume and it’s like a balm soothing his frayed nerves.

She’s sitting on the bed, boots discarded by her feet and untangling her hair away from the knots that had formed, the black wig previously covering it lying atop the bed in a mess of curls. He drapes his towel over the back of a chair and reaches for her, standing between her legs and pulling her hands away from her hair, cupping them in his own and placing a kiss on her knuckles before setting them down and working on untangling the knots gently, combing through the soft strands.

Burying his fingers in her hair, he massages her scalp, applying light pressure on the vertebrae at the back of her neck. She lets out a soft sigh and hugs his waist, melting into his touch. Resting her forehead against his chest, she finally cries.

 

-

He’s just come in from LaGuardia per Rogers’ request to fill in for him and Natasha as they “take the kids on a field trip”, training the new recruits while they take the newest additions to the Avengers for recon in Nigeria, maybe lay a trap for Rumlow. He doesn’t envy them one bit, that is one particular mess he doesn’t want to deal with. He drops his duffel on the floor by his feet, bow and quiver already stashed into his quarters by the overeager new personnel.

Sunglasses still covering his eyes, he stops to take in their progress at the tower, having just been informed by FRIDAY that “ _Professor Romanoff_ is finishing a briefing with Captain Rogers” before she’s coming in from the conference room, laughing with Steve. She stops abruptly to stare at his leather clad back across the room; his duffel by the floor where he’d dropped it and she takes off at a sprint, boots pounding the tiles as a smile breaks across her face.

He doesn’t even have time to turn before she’s upon him, legs wrapped around his waist and arms slung across his shoulders. She clings to him like a koala, turning her head and planting a loud kiss on his cheek, her now-long hair draped across his shoulder as she leans further into him. He slings one arm to wrap around hers and playfully tugs on the strands tickling his sleeves, laughing at her exuberance and out of sheer joy to see her.

Her smell engulfs him as he turns his head to touch their lips, gunpowder and oranges with the faint undertones of cinnamon. To him, it’s just the smell of home.

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, so constructive criticism is welcome, as are kudos and comments.
> 
> Title from the poem Black Hair by Akiko Yosano.


End file.
